Account-Level Placement Exclusions: A Quick Win for Brand Safety and Efficiency

Stop wasting spend on risky placements — apply account-level exclusions today

If your reports show low-quality impressions, unsafe placements, or skyrocketing CPAs across multiple campaigns, you don’t need another bid tweak — you need account-level controls. Account-level placement exclusions are one of the fastest, highest-impact levers to improve brand safety and campaign efficiency across your Google Ads account.

Why this is a quick win in 2026

Google’s advertising ecosystem has moved rapidly through late 2024–2025 and into 2026: automation and AI bidding now spread budget across more inventory types, and publishers are fragmenting attention into thousands of micro-sites and apps. That increases both opportunity and risk. The ability to apply exclusions at account level (not just per campaign) reduces manual work and ensures a consistent safety posture across Display, YouTube, and Discovery inventory — while protecting ROAS as automated bidding strategies scale.

Top-line: What account-level placement exclusions deliver

• Immediate brand safety: block risky domains, app inventory, and sensitive content categories accountwide.
• Operational efficiency: one change protects all current and future campaigns, cutting manual edits and errors.
• Consistent measurement: fewer anomalies in cross-campaign reporting and cleaner attribution.
• Scalability: use the same exclusion list as you add new channels or adopt automated bidding strategies.

When to use account-level exclusions (and when not to)

Use them when:

• You run multiple Display, Video, or Discovery campaigns and want consistent brand safety control.
• Automated bidding (Smart Bidding, AI-driven portfolio strategies) is reallocating budget across placements unpredictably.
• You have recurring manual work: repeatedly removing the same sites or apps from campaign after campaign.
• Your brand must meet strict compliance or creative-safety requirements (finance, health, legal).

Don’t use account-level exclusions when:

• You need campaign-specific tests for reach in fringe placements — manage exceptions at the campaign level.
• You intentionally want to target a small set of high-volume channels that other campaigns should avoid.
• You’re testing performance in a narrow pilot and need tight control over placement exclusions specific to that test.

How Google’s 2025–2026 changes affect placement exclusions

Several platform and industry shifts make account-level exclusion lists more critical in 2026:

• Expanded inventory controls: Google rolled out broader account-level exclusion functionality across Display, YouTube, and Discovery in late 2025, making it easier to apply global lists. (Always check your account UI — feature rollouts continue.)
• Automation-first bidding: With AI reallocating budget faster, a single unsafe placement can quickly drain spend across multiple campaigns.
• Privacy-driven targeting limits: As ID-based targeting declines, contextual and placement signals gain weight — making placement exclusions more impactful.

Quick point: account-level exclusions don’t replace campaign strategy — they enforce policy. Use them to protect the brand and enable aggressive optimization elsewhere.

Practical, step-by-step: Implement account-level placement exclusions

Below is a practical checklist that maps to the Google Ads UI and API workflows. Follow these steps to create, test, and govern an account-level exclusion list.

1. Audit current placements (15–30 minutes)

1. Download the Placements report (Display & Video) for the last 30–90 days.
2. Sort by spend and low-performing placements (high spend + low conversion or high bounce).
3. Flag obvious brand-safety risks: adult, piracy, sensationalist or extremist sites, and low-quality mobile apps.

2. Build a reusable exclusion list (30–60 minutes)

Use the template further down for a quick CSV. Prioritize by risk and spend:

• Tier A (must exclude): domains/apps that are brand unsafe or violate policy.
• Tier B (exclude unless campaign needs reach): low-quality publishers that repeatedly underperform.
• Tier C (monitor only): borderline placements to add to negative campaign lists until confirmed.

3. Apply at the account level

In Google Ads (as of 2026 UI):

1. Navigate to Tools & Settings > Setup > Excluded content and placements (or the new account exclusion center).
2. Upload or paste your exclusion list and select inventory types (Display, YouTube, Discovery).
3. Set labels/tags (Tier A, Tier B, reason, added-by, date) for governance.

4. Monitor, measure, and iterate (ongoing)

• Review placements weekly for the first 30 days, then monthly.
• Track KPIs: % of spend on excluded placements before vs after, CPA, ROAS, and viewability.
• Keep a change log so stakeholders can see when a domain was excluded and why.

5. Automate where possible

Use Google Ads scripts, the Google Ads API, or your ad platform manager to:

• Automatically import a curated exclusion CSV from a centralized storage (S3/Drive).
• Push updates to all managed accounts via MCC (manager account) for agencies.
• Trigger alerts when a previously excluded domain appears in reports (indicating a configuration issue).

Reusable exclusion list template (CSV + rules)

Copy-paste this CSV example. Use the Domain column for web placements and the App Package column for Android apps (bundle ID). Include Scope and Tier for governance.

Domain,App Package,Scope,Tier,Reason,Added By,Date
example-pirate-site.com,,Account,Tier A,Piracy and copyright violations,media-team,2026-01-10
lowvalue-adnetwork.net,,Account,Tier B,Low viewability and invalid traffic,paid-ops,2026-01-10
suspicious-video-channel.com,,Account,Tier A,Extreme or misleading content,comms,2026-01-10
com.example.badapp,com.example.badapp,Account,Tier A,Ad fraud & incentivized installs,devops,2026-01-10
  

Pro tip: keep an internal column for Trust Score (0–100) derived from third-party brand-safety vendors; exclude everything below your threshold.

Examples and measurable outcomes

Case example (anonymized): a mid-market ecommerce brand implemented account-level exclusions across Display and YouTube in Q4 2025. The team:

• Removed 120 Tier A domains and 40 low-quality apps.
• Saw a 14% reduction in non-viewable impressions within 30 days.
• Reported a 10% improvement in conversion rate and a 7% lift in ROAS in the subsequent 60 days — mostly from reduced wasted impressions and cleaner automated bidding signals.

Note: results vary by account. The consistent signal is that reducing noisy, low-quality placements helps automated bidding strategies allocate more budget to profitable inventory.

Advanced strategies for power users

1. Combine account-level exclusions with inventory type filters

Use Google’s inventory filters (e.g., Limited, Standard, Expanded) alongside exclusions to create layered safety: use Standard for most campaigns, reserve Expanded for exploratory tests, and always apply Tier A exclusions.

2. Use negative placement lists in tandem for exceptions

If a campaign intentionally needs fringe reach, create campaign-level negative placement lists that are exceptions, not account-level rules. That gives you both scale and surgical control.

3. Integrate third-party verification

Feed signals from brand-safety vendors (DoubleVerify, IAS, etc.) into your exclusion governance. Set automatic rules to add domains flagged by verification partners to a staging Tier B list for review.

4. Monitor via analytics and attribution

Use cross-channel analytics to correlate placement exclusions with performance. If conversions rise after exclusions, attribute improvements to cleaner inventory rather than bidding changes.

Governance: who owns the list?

Successful accounts treat exclusions like policy, not a one-person job. Recommended governance:

• Owner: Paid Media Lead (approves Tier A exclusions)
• Operator: Paid Ops / Programmatic team (maintains the CSV and pushes changes)
• Reviewer: Brand & Legal (monthly review for borderline cases)

Keep a versioned log and require two-person approval for Tier A additions to avoid overblocking reach by mistake.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Over-blocking: Don’t exclude major publishers wholesale. Use domain-level data to avoid losing premium inventory.
• Stale lists: Review exclusions quarterly — publishers change, apps rebrand, and your thresholds should adapt.
• Blind trust in automation: Even with AI bidding, you must enforce placement policies; otherwise, automation can reallocate spend inefficiently.

Checklist: Launch account-level exclusions in one afternoon

1. Export placements and identify top 50 risky domains (15–30 mins).
2. Populate the template CSV with Tier A and Tier B entries (20–30 mins).
3. Upload to Google Ads account-level exclusions and tag entries (10–15 mins).
4. Set monitoring alerts and schedule the first review in 7 days (10 mins).

Future-proofing your approach (2026+)

Expect Google and other platforms to continue tightening inventory controls and adding more granular account-level features. Two priorities for next-level readiness:

• Centralized policy-as-code: keep exclusion lists in a source-controlled repository and deploy them programmatically to accounts.
• Signal-driven automation: combine publisher risk signals with conversion data to automatically shift a domain between Tier A/B/C based on performance and safety feeds.

Final thoughts

Account-level placement exclusions are a pragmatic, high-ROI control in the 2026 ad stack. They reduce wasted spend, align safety across campaigns, and make automated bidding more effective. Treated as a living policy — not a static list — they become a strategic lever that helps scale acquisition with lower risk.

Ready to act? Start with the CSV template above, apply a Tier A baseline, and monitor performance for 30 days. If you need a hand scaling exclusion governance across multiple accounts or automating deployment via the Google Ads API or MCC, we can help.

Call to action

Want a customized exclusion list and a 30-day action plan tuned to your account? Contact our team for a free audit — we’ll identify quick wins and build a reusable exclusion list you can deploy accountwide.

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